17 ms·

Happiness is earning $60,000/year

152 points by justinchen 16y ago

synnik 16y ago
That sounds about right. From about 1999-2004, I didn't negotiate salaries. I told potential employers that I wanted exactly 60K. The question was how many hours a week I would have to work to earn it. The winner was 22 hours. I only changed this tactic when I had kids. Because that changes everything.
- teaspoon 16y ago
  What kind of work were you in? I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
- tsally 16y ago
  Can you elaborate on this? I'm really interested in the type of work that you did and your negotiating process. Was it software development? What type of companies did you work with?
  - synnik 16y ago
    Yes, it is software development. It actually started when I was working at IBM. I asked if I could go part-time, and they said yes, offering 57K for 30 hours a week. I was also talking to some startups, and told them about the offer I had, asking them to beat it by offering 60K for less hours. One of them agreed, and I worked for them for 2 years. I followed that model for a few more years, working mostly with service-based companies who were willing to bill me out for part-time work.
- yason 16y ago
  Why did you change it because you had kids?
  - synnik 16y ago
    Because it is one thing to limit the finances when I am single... But after getting married and having kids, I am no longer just limiting myself -- I am restricting the resources that I can offer the children. I could not afford private schools or college, I would need to watch my money on clothes and food, and we would have to live in a smaller home. All of this could still be OK. They aren't even old enough for those things to be issues yet. But it is difficult to ramp up a stable income overnight, so I decided to go back to trying to maximize my income, to give us more choices in the future, as the kids grow up. And we may still do public school or homeschooling, and may still live to the 60K budget. Time will tell, but I think having the choices available to us is wise.
gyardley 16y ago
Happiness is not having others try to tell you what makes you happy based off of some study.
- goodside 16y ago
  I hold the same philosophy with regard to cigarettes. I'll decide for myself what's carcinogenic, thank you very much.
  - proee 16y ago
    In other words, ignorance is bliss...
    - electromagnetic 16y ago
      Isn't it? What makes you happier; smoking a cigarette that makes you feel good, or avoiding it like all hell because it could cause cancer in you? Similarly, what makes you happier; eating a double big mac, large fries and substitute a large drink for a large milkshake and almost die from a foodgasm, or be told you just ate like 1000 calories and you're basically going to have to eat rice cakes for the rest of the day unless you want to end up the size of a manatee by breakfast tomorrow? I have, on average, a 1 in 1000 chance of dying in a freak non-work related accident, if eating a big mac every week has less of a chance of killing me than walking out of my front door (or even staying inside and not cowering in a self-powered nuclear bunker) I really couldn't give a damn. I don't smoke cigarettes, I never have. I've never had the urge, the smell just puts me off. However, it doesn't mean I wouldn't smoke a cigar if someone handed one to me. My life is for living not regretting, that's the job of the as-yet-to-be-proved thing those religious fuzzy wuzzies keep telling me is the afterlife. If there is one, I'm sure there'll be plenty of things I'll regret but that's no concern of mine while I'm living. I've lived a half-world (1/4 literally) away from my wife and I can tell you that did more to damage my longevity than a cigarette ever will. I may in 30 years have regrets over moving to another country to marry my wife, however in all honesty I truly doubt it. My life isn't the best, but it's pretty amazing on that scale of mundaneness called an average-life.
chr15 16y ago
If you make too little money, all you think about is money. If you make too much money, all you think about it money. I'd have to agree with this article. Personally, I think much of happiness comes from finding the middle ground where you don't don't have to think about money.
- redorb 16y ago
  yes there has been that "Carrot and Stick" TED talk posted here twice in the last 2 weeks; that basically helped me understand that if you can... "Take money off the table, pay people enough to not have to think about money" ~ thats when they will perform best.
  - GFischer 16y ago
    Ah, having just enough money to not think about money sounds about right :) I like this blog post that says that money can buy you happiness... if you spend it right (like being with the right people like another poster suggests, or spending it on "positive experiences" like this suggests): http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201005/money-can-buy-happiness-if-you-spent-it-right http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201005/...
- hugh3 16y ago
  I forget who it was who said that money is like sex: you only think about it when you're not getting enough of it, and if you are you find something more interesting to think about. I also forget whether this was supposed to be a commentary on money or a commentary on sex. In any case, if you're getting enough of both you're probably pretty happy.
  - Aetius 16y ago
    Felix Dennis http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article1084093.ece http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article1084093.ece
    - 16y ago
Kilimanjaro 16y ago
Nop, happiness is about having $10M in assets and earning $1M a year in royalties. Believe me. Until then, keep coding...
- george_morgan 16y ago
  Do go on.
  - dunstad 16y ago
    Can't a guy trail off if he wants to in this place?
- ruslan 16y ago
  If I had that wealth I would still keep coding... just for fun and for the sake of coding! Probably I would focus on something extraordinary, like robotics or AI.
  - juliend2 16y ago
    Then why don't you focus on robotics or AI right now? Life is too short for NOT focusing on something you find extraordinary.
    - cglee 16y ago
      Because you can afford to suck in something you find extraordinary when you're rich, whereas you can't if you need to get paid.
    - robryan 16y ago
      Usually these kind of goals are ones that are only realistic if you have already made it big and can fund something expensive without the need to see real returns for a long time. Like what Elon Musk has done with spacex, wouldn't have been possible without large personal wealth.
  - Aetius 16y ago
ErrantX 16y ago
I suspect this is a case of using a metric (money) to explain a complex fact (what makes us happy). Yes, $60,000/yr may make you happy. But I suspect that is about being comfortable and able to live without concern (over money issues, for example). I expect that if you gave a control group a comfortable life / success and just $1,000 a year then a large part would also be happy. Reverse would apply to a group with $100K but put through merry hell :) A better conclusion would be that happiness is probably being comfortable and feeling successful etc.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
klochner 16y ago
The inverse seems kind of obvious - poverty sucks
larrykubin 16y ago
Last time I read the number was 12,000: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/02/AR2006070200733.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07... I must say, I got by with 12k (what I made in 2004), but if any emergency would have happened I would have been in trouble. 60k is very comfortable here in Texas. I also know some very miserable millionaires who are depressed no matter how many pills they take.
- acangiano 16y ago
  It really depends on where you live. In Toronto, I pay more than $16K a year in rent alone.
- Qz 16y ago
  I can easily do 8k in Pittsburgh, if I gave up my car (insurance is crazy expensive)
cloudkj 16y ago
I think the caveat is that the money is earned doing something you enjoy. I'm sure most of us here can attest to that.
derefr 16y ago
Another interpretation is that it currently requires $60,000/year for a US citizen to not be lacking the means to fulfill one or another step on Maslow's hierarchy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslows_hierarchy_of_needs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslows_hierarchy_of_needs Given that the [2008] US GDP is $14.4 trillion/year, and there are ~300 million US citizens, it turns out we're each, on average, creating $48,000/year in value. So, on average, each citizen is $12,000 of unhappy.
- Perceval 16y ago
  Because income is heavily skewed by outliers (e.g. Bill Gates), it makes more sense to look at the median income alongside the average income. Median household income with 1.35 earners and 2.57 household members is $44,389. That's less than the per capita average of $48,000, and it's spread over 2.5 people. Turns out that about 70% of the households in the United States are going to be below $60,000. Divided by the number of people in the household (hits about three once you get to high enough income levels), you don't get $60,000 per person until household income rises to $180,000. At that point, about 90% of U.S. households fall below that income level. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...
  - derefr 16y ago
    The article is vague on whether the $60,000 is actually required for each person to be happy, or whether it's simply required that you be part of an average-population household that shares a $60,000 income source. I think they mostly interviewed earners.
  - rokhayakebe 16y ago
    Then again at $60k for one person it may include the ability to afford a decent home + car etc...hence by the time the second or third person rolls in the extra cost to achieve that happiness is not $60k per person. It could be even lower than $30k.
    - flipbrad 16y ago
Heston 16y ago
This title comes off as cliché...No, money can't buy you happiness but it does allow one to be happy. For when you consider the other end of the spectrum, poverty won't make you happy either; but then, everyone knew that.
brc 16y ago
To me, happiness comes from knowing your financial future is becoming more secure, not less secure. The ultimate happiness will come from knowing that you can get that 60k per year for the rest of your days, without necessarily having to work. Trading your precious time for 60k from someone else would definitely not keep me happy.
neilc 16y ago
If I made, say, $1 million/year, I think I'd be happier -- for the simple reason that I could afford to only work one day per week (or a few months per year, or work for 5 years and then semi-retire, etc.). That would mean a lot more freedom to choose how to spend my time, to travel, and so on. (Of course, I'd probably end up doing something similar to "work" during a lot of my spare time, but there's an amazing difference between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards for an activity.) I've often thought that applying this on a smaller scale would be interesting -- for example, trading $140k/year for $110k/year plus an extra six weeks of paid vacation time.
- ghshephard 16y ago
  Or, Trading $140k/year for $110K/year and _taking_ two weeks of vacation. I'm astonished at how few people in Silicon Valley companies take more than a week off per year. I think it's unhealthy, and, ironically, likely reduces their effectiveness overall. But, as one who took a day off, and came back to 192 email, at least 10-15 of which really needed me to pay attention - I don't understand how to leave the work place gracefully. It's almost like I have to hire my replacement, and transition all my responsibilities to them prior to taking any time off. I couldn't agree more with the author of the story - once the basics like shelter, housing, food, water and Medical Care are taken care of, spending quality time with friends and family really is the key to happiness.
  - lambdajack 16y ago
    Until you consider the safety net you need if things go to hell in a handbasket. Is that $60K living at or below your means? Does it consider enough to sock away so you don't have to eat cat food in retirement or cover your real expenses if your job is pulled out from under you?
- BobbyH 16y ago
  neilc, I personally agree with your intuition, but Daniel Kahneman's point seems to be that, on average, you would be as happy making $60k as you would be making $1 million a year. This concurs with a lot of other research that suggests that human beings are terrible at estimating what makes them happy. I enjoyed this book on that exact topic: http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/1400077427/ http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/...
blizkreeg 16y ago
Whether it is in the making of $60K or $1M per year, happiness is in the pursuit of the making, of the living. An analogy I like is if you ask a 'tourist' about his memories of a place, you're likely to get a very different answer than if you ask a 'traveler'. In fact, in the former case, you might even get a rather drab answer. The latter will inspire you.
- hugh3 16y ago
  In my experience, "travelers" are just tourists who have a complex about it.
grellas 16y ago
Americans are materially wealthy relative to most of the rest of the world. I would suspect (without having any sort of citation to support it) that, when compared to Americans, most of the people who have ever lived in any time and in any country have known nowhere near the standard of living represented by a $60K annual income in the U.S. today. If that assumption is true, and if the premise of this piece is also correct, this would mean that most of the people who have ever lived throughout all of humanity's existence have been unhappy with their lives. That would seem to me a dubious proposition. I think that neither money nor happiness is the key but rather contentment. Life dishes up the good and bad to us all, and we often can't do anything about that, but learning to be content with what we have is an achievable and worthwhile goal for all - and also a better measure than money can ever be of whether we have lived our lives well.
- merrick33 16y ago
  I don't believe you watched the TED talk by Daniel Kahneman embedded in the blog post. Daniel Kahneman mentions the 60k stat after his discussion and says "for Americans". That should lead you to the conclusion that the number would likely be different if you did the gallup survey in a different country.
- timwiseman 16y ago
  Sir, as always you make excellent points. Though in this case, I think you may be neglecting one thing. As the article mentions towards the end, humans are creatures of comparison. Someone earning around 60K in America can see that they are better off materially than most of the people in their city and if they pay any attention at all to the world they will know they are vastly better off than the majority of the world. At that point they are hardly wealthy, but better off than most.
  - ericd 16y ago
    Yep, I was going to post exactly this. You can be making 200k/year, but if you're a trader and your peers are pulling 400-600k, you're very likely to be unhappy with your predicament. Humans are competitive. If you have the best mud hut of everyone you know and know of, it seems likely that you'll be just as happy as that top trader, with regards to wealth.
marilyn 16y ago
Apparently you only needed $40,000 to be happy in 2004. http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2004/08/01/you-only-need-40000-to-be-happy/ http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2004/08/01/you-only-need-40000...
SamAtt 16y ago
I've never agreed with this theory. He seems to frame things in terms of irresponsible living and under that criteria I agree. If the difference between 60k and 90k is just "a little more “entertainment” and maybe some bigger stuff" to you than his theory works out. But to the person who invests that extra 30k a year and gets to retire at 50 instead of 70 I think the happiness difference is pretty significant. I'd bet the 55 year old who gets to spend his days as he wishes is much happier than the 55 year old still working his 9 to 5 job.
- barrkel 16y ago
  I think you may be overestimating the benefits of retirement in practice. Many retired people feel directionless and purposeless, and die sooner. By your argument, unemployed people living off the dole ought to be very happy, but it's actually depressing.
  - neilc 16y ago
    Living off the dole is filled with stress. If you had a reliable, steady income and the health to enjoy it, I think most people would be much happier than they are working a typical job. Living off the dole is also not something considered socially respectable, whereas early retirement is widely accepted.
    - barrkel 16y ago
      What I'm objecting to is this concept which seems to exist in this thread that work is a drudge, and being relieved from it is a net positive. I think it's simply not true. Quite apart from enjoying your work, there's the social aspect, it gets you out of the house, gives you a reason to get up in the morning, you incrementally work towards longer-term goals, etc. Retirement in leisure has none of these things, and I strongly believe you'll find the bloom wears off the rose quite quickly if you don't find some other form of work to do, even if you don't choose to call it work, or aren't paid for it. I believe a man who retires at 70 will be happier than one who retires at 50, and he'll live longer too (leaving aside those who die between 50 and 70).
sosuke 16y ago
So if I'm single $60k is fine, throw in some dependents and that changes very fast. I think I'd be happier at $180k a year and $60k more for each new dependent that comes along. That takes care of health, house, education and plenty extra to stash away.
- rokhayakebe 16y ago
  It's not linear. One person = $60k. Two = definitely less than $120k.
jack7890 16y ago
Even if you believe Kahneman (I happen to), the $60k number is probably illusory for most Americans, since location is important. In NYC, perhaps the number is $95k; in rural Arkansas, perhaps it's $25k. I'd love to see data on how the specific "ideal" income level varies by location.
- nandemo 16y ago
  For what is worth, the average yearly income for salarymen in Tokyo is about 6 million yen (~=U$65k). http://nensyu-labo.com/ken_tokyo.htm http://nensyu-labo.com/ken_tokyo.htm (In Japanese) I think NYC's cost of living is not that much higher than Tokyo's. However, as many pointed out in this thread, people care a lot about their income relative to their neighbors. So it's plausible that New Yorkers would require a much higher income to be content, compared to Tokyoites.
dnsworks 16y ago
Having watched how developers (even several from HN) completely mis-understood John Allspaw's talk about business needs & deployments, I now imagine part of the next generation of HN start-up types will begin offering $60k salaries to engineers citing that TED video as the basis of their market rate guesstimate.
jamiequint 16y ago
Everyone here seems to be missing the fact that in the video he differentiates between the "experiencing self" and the "remembering self". With respect to the "remembering self", the reflective state, the more money you earn the more satisfied you are. Or to paraphrase Socrates: The unexamined life is not worth living, unless you are poor.
WingForward 16y ago
Total misrepresentation. Kahneman says that at $60K a year your direct experience of happiness flatlines. But our perception of how happy we are increases with the amount of money we make, far beyond the $60K. There's two types of happiness, how happy we are and how happy we think we are and the two correlate only at a .5. The flatlining question is "How happy are you right now?" The question that increases with wealth is "How happy are you?" Which is a fairer representation of how people understand happiness?
rg 16y ago
H L Mencken once defined a wealthy man as one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.
- frankus 16y ago
  Robert Frank has a book (Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class) that makes a convincing case that that effect does in fact exist. He goes on to argue for a progressive consumption tax, which is fairly convincing depending on your politics.
  - ellyagg 16y ago
    "[D]epending on your politics", indeed. It's not self-evident that everyone should be equally happy. It's not even self-evident that happiness should be the overriding concern of our existence. I've sacrificed my happiness many times in the name of other principles, especially truth. And, it wasn't "sacrifice temporarily for greater happiness later" or any other such rationalization.
    - frankus 16y ago
      I agree, but that everyone should be equally happy is not what the book argues at all. Frank's argument boils down to the fact that a lot of categories of consumption are zero-sum games, and that if played with lower stakes people could afford more important things with the money they save. For instance, if every SUV owner has to have 20-inch wheels to appear wealthy, SUV owners aren't as a whole are worse off than if 18-inch wheels were considered a sign of wealth and they all had health insurance. So the argument is that there are a lot of consumption arms races in the economy where some sort of coordinated de-escalation would benefit all of the players. The coordination he proposes is a progressive consumption tax imposed by the government, which I would agree is probably superior to the current progressive income tax.
- jseliger 16y ago
  Upvoted. People interested in this discussion should also read Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, which discusses the surprising vast amount of research on various aspects of happiness, and that research draws on a fairly diverse array of methods (self-reports, random beepers, inferences based on statistics, etc.). Gilbert puts the dollar amount closer to $40K, rather than $60K, and points out the Mencken quote in action: most people think they need to earn about 20% more than they do, almost regardless of how much they earn. But people seem more satisfied by work they find meaningful, a good sex life, and social connections (not necessarily in that order). I mentioned Stumbling on Happiness in my list of influential / important books to me: http://jseliger.com/2010/03/22/influential-books-on-me-that-is http://jseliger.com/2010/03/22/influential-books-on-me-that-... , though perhaps I should've said more about it.
rg 16y ago
H L Mencken once defined a wealthy man as one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.
steveplace 16y ago
Happiness as a function of wealth represents a sigmoid function. This function is different for people (you could go around and define the coefficients in some stupid analogy). The second derivative is the most important. Where that hits its peak is where you can define "financial freedom," and where it hits its trough is where you can define "fuck you money."
tsally 16y ago
This article missed half the point and doesn't quite capture what was said in the TED talk. Earning above $60,000 a year doesn't affect the happiness of the experiencing self. But as Kahneman goes on to say, it certainly affects the happiness of the remembering self. So a lot of money wont affect how happy you are at a particular moment, but it does affect how happy you are with your life as a whole.
mikeyur 16y ago
I recently spent a few hours figuring out how much I need to be happy. Happy to me is living comfortable with enough extra cash to go out or take periodic trips without going into debt. I'm currently living at home and paying off some debt (I'm only 19 so it's still socially acceptable to be living with mom and dad :P). I wrote out the cost of necessities (rent, phone/internet, food, transportation, healthcare/insurance) and then all of the extras. I want to live comfortable so for rent I said $1500 (about what a 1bdrm condo in Vancouver goes for), food $800 (includes going out to eat and regular trips to starbucks), Phone/Internet $150, Transit pass $100, healthcare $100. The costs are mostly rounded up, if I can save cash without sacrificing happiness I'll cut costs down. On top of the basics I want to save $500 (minimum) each month and have $2k or so in the "misc" category. This includes clothes, household expenses and extras. I calculated the amount and it was around $5500/mo. I then recalculated and factored taxes in, I believe it was around $6800/month pre-taxes. In the past month I've been looking at ways to get this income. I could look into a 9-5 job, but that wouldn't make me very happy. I decided to get a couple clients on retainer with $7k/mo. as my goal. I've already locked down a large client who will cover most of my income for about 40hrs/month of work on my end. I'm quite confident I'll find another client to get me to the goal amount. I'll be able to live well for approximately 3hrs per day, 5 days a week of work. I'm talking to a startup right now about joining on as a cofounder, and if I do I'm glad I'll be able to work on my own company without having to survive on ramen or live in a crack den.
- jimbokun 16y ago
  "On top of the basics I want to save $500 (minimum) each month and have $2k or so in the "misc" category." I would recommend swapping the save and misc amounts.
yason 16y ago
You can be happy with really low earnings, too. It's just harder then but the happiness or lack of it is still inside your head. It's harder with very little money because you will have to learn to be truly happy—not just I-don't-have-to-worry-about-paying-for-food-and-rent happy. In the latter case, you can keep thinking of how happy you are because you have so few things to worry about. In the former case you can't afford to worry at all.
charlesju 16y ago
I would be miserable making a steady $60,000/year.
adamilardi 16y ago
They say money can't buy happiness look at my cking smile ear to ear baby!. Boiler room
xbryanx 16y ago
Hey tech brainiacs. Read this, and then come work at one of the many non-profit organizations starving for your intelligence, but unable to attract you because of ridiculous salary imbalances. We'd love to have you...and 60k is about all we'll ever be able to afford...and you'll be happy.
- justinchen 16y ago
  I think a recruiting campaign centered on that point might actually be effective. I'd like to see some non-profits use it.
JustinSeriously 16y ago
I think the key take-away is this: But the real trick, Kahneman said, is to spend time with people you like. I've looked at my history of happiness, and I've found very little correlation between my salary and happiness, mostly just a short term happiness bump when I first get a raise. On the other hand, the correlation between nearness of good friends and my happiness stands clearly.
Maven911 16y ago
A better title would be: "Study shows that happiness does not increase with salary if you make over 60k a year"

152 points by justinchen 16y ago

That sounds about right. From about 1999-2004, I didn't negotiate salaries. I told potential employers that I wanted exactly 60K. The question was how many hours a week I would have to work to earn it. The winner was 22 hours. I only changed this tactic when I had kids. Because that changes everything.

teaspoon 16y ago
What kind of work were you in? I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
tsally 16y ago
Can you elaborate on this? I'm really interested in the type of work that you did and your negotiating process. Was it software development? What type of companies did you work with?
- synnik 16y ago
  Yes, it is software development. It actually started when I was working at IBM. I asked if I could go part-time, and they said yes, offering 57K for 30 hours a week. I was also talking to some startups, and told them about the offer I had, asking them to beat it by offering 60K for less hours. One of them agreed, and I worked for them for 2 years. I followed that model for a few more years, working mostly with service-based companies who were willing to bill me out for part-time work.
yason 16y ago
Why did you change it because you had kids?
- synnik 16y ago
  Because it is one thing to limit the finances when I am single... But after getting married and having kids, I am no longer just limiting myself -- I am restricting the resources that I can offer the children. I could not afford private schools or college, I would need to watch my money on clothes and food, and we would have to live in a smaller home. All of this could still be OK. They aren't even old enough for those things to be issues yet. But it is difficult to ramp up a stable income overnight, so I decided to go back to trying to maximize my income, to give us more choices in the future, as the kids grow up. And we may still do public school or homeschooling, and may still live to the 60K budget. Time will tell, but I think having the choices available to us is wise.

gyardley 16y ago

Happiness is not having others try to tell you what makes you happy based off of some study.

goodside 16y ago
I hold the same philosophy with regard to cigarettes. I'll decide for myself what's carcinogenic, thank you very much.
- proee 16y ago
  In other words, ignorance is bliss...
  - electromagnetic 16y ago
    Isn't it? What makes you happier; smoking a cigarette that makes you feel good, or avoiding it like all hell because it could cause cancer in you? Similarly, what makes you happier; eating a double big mac, large fries and substitute a large drink for a large milkshake and almost die from a foodgasm, or be told you just ate like 1000 calories and you're basically going to have to eat rice cakes for the rest of the day unless you want to end up the size of a manatee by breakfast tomorrow? I have, on average, a 1 in 1000 chance of dying in a freak non-work related accident, if eating a big mac every week has less of a chance of killing me than walking out of my front door (or even staying inside and not cowering in a self-powered nuclear bunker) I really couldn't give a damn. I don't smoke cigarettes, I never have. I've never had the urge, the smell just puts me off. However, it doesn't mean I wouldn't smoke a cigar if someone handed one to me. My life is for living not regretting, that's the job of the as-yet-to-be-proved thing those religious fuzzy wuzzies keep telling me is the afterlife. If there is one, I'm sure there'll be plenty of things I'll regret but that's no concern of mine while I'm living. I've lived a half-world (1/4 literally) away from my wife and I can tell you that did more to damage my longevity than a cigarette ever will. I may in 30 years have regrets over moving to another country to marry my wife, however in all honesty I truly doubt it. My life isn't the best, but it's pretty amazing on that scale of mundaneness called an average-life.

chr15 16y ago

If you make too little money, all you think about is money. If you make too much money, all you think about it money. I'd have to agree with this article. Personally, I think much of happiness comes from finding the middle ground where you don't don't have to think about money.

redorb 16y ago
yes there has been that "Carrot and Stick" TED talk posted here twice in the last 2 weeks; that basically helped me understand that if you can... "Take money off the table, pay people enough to not have to think about money" ~ thats when they will perform best.
- GFischer 16y ago
  Ah, having just enough money to not think about money sounds about right :) I like this blog post that says that money can buy you happiness... if you spend it right (like being with the right people like another poster suggests, or spending it on "positive experiences" like this suggests): http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201005/money-can-buy-happiness-if-you-spent-it-right http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201005/...
hugh3 16y ago
I forget who it was who said that money is like sex: you only think about it when you're not getting enough of it, and if you are you find something more interesting to think about. I also forget whether this was supposed to be a commentary on money or a commentary on sex. In any case, if you're getting enough of both you're probably pretty happy.
- Aetius 16y ago
  Felix Dennis http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article1084093.ece http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article1084093.ece
  - 16y ago

Kilimanjaro 16y ago

Nop, happiness is about having $10M in assets and earning $1M a year in royalties. Believe me. Until then, keep coding...

george_morgan 16y ago
Do go on.
- dunstad 16y ago
  Can't a guy trail off if he wants to in this place?
ruslan 16y ago
If I had that wealth I would still keep coding... just for fun and for the sake of coding! Probably I would focus on something extraordinary, like robotics or AI.
- juliend2 16y ago
  Then why don't you focus on robotics or AI right now? Life is too short for NOT focusing on something you find extraordinary.
  - cglee 16y ago
    Because you can afford to suck in something you find extraordinary when you're rich, whereas you can't if you need to get paid.
  - robryan 16y ago
    Usually these kind of goals are ones that are only realistic if you have already made it big and can fund something expensive without the need to see real returns for a long time. Like what Elon Musk has done with spacex, wouldn't have been possible without large personal wealth.
- Aetius 16y ago

ErrantX 16y ago

I suspect this is a case of using a metric (money) to explain a complex fact (what makes us happy). Yes, $60,000/yr may make you happy. But I suspect that is about being comfortable and able to live without concern (over money issues, for example). I expect that if you gave a control group a comfortable life / success and just $1,000 a year then a large part would also be happy. Reverse would apply to a group with $100K but put through merry hell :) A better conclusion would be that happiness is probably being comfortable and feeling successful etc.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

klochner 16y ago

The inverse seems kind of obvious - poverty sucks

larrykubin 16y ago

Last time I read the number was 12,000: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/02/AR2006070200733.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07... I must say, I got by with 12k (what I made in 2004), but if any emergency would have happened I would have been in trouble. 60k is very comfortable here in Texas. I also know some very miserable millionaires who are depressed no matter how many pills they take.

acangiano 16y ago
It really depends on where you live. In Toronto, I pay more than $16K a year in rent alone.
Qz 16y ago
I can easily do 8k in Pittsburgh, if I gave up my car (insurance is crazy expensive)

cloudkj 16y ago

I think the caveat is that the money is earned doing something you enjoy. I'm sure most of us here can attest to that.

derefr 16y ago

Another interpretation is that it currently requires $60,000/year for a US citizen to not be lacking the means to fulfill one or another step on Maslow's hierarchy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslows_hierarchy_of_needs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslows_hierarchy_of_needs Given that the [2008] US GDP is $14.4 trillion/year, and there are ~300 million US citizens, it turns out we're each, on average, creating $48,000/year in value. So, on average, each citizen is $12,000 of unhappy.

Perceval 16y ago
Because income is heavily skewed by outliers (e.g. Bill Gates), it makes more sense to look at the median income alongside the average income. Median household income with 1.35 earners and 2.57 household members is $44,389. That's less than the per capita average of $48,000, and it's spread over 2.5 people. Turns out that about 70% of the households in the United States are going to be below $60,000. Divided by the number of people in the household (hits about three once you get to high enough income levels), you don't get $60,000 per person until household income rises to $180,000. At that point, about 90% of U.S. households fall below that income level. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...
- derefr 16y ago
  The article is vague on whether the $60,000 is actually required for each person to be happy, or whether it's simply required that you be part of an average-population household that shares a $60,000 income source. I think they mostly interviewed earners.
- rokhayakebe 16y ago
  Then again at $60k for one person it may include the ability to afford a decent home + car etc...hence by the time the second or third person rolls in the extra cost to achieve that happiness is not $60k per person. It could be even lower than $30k.
  - flipbrad 16y ago

Heston 16y ago

This title comes off as cliché...No, money can't buy you happiness but it does allow one to be happy. For when you consider the other end of the spectrum, poverty won't make you happy either; but then, everyone knew that.

brc 16y ago

To me, happiness comes from knowing your financial future is becoming more secure, not less secure. The ultimate happiness will come from knowing that you can get that 60k per year for the rest of your days, without necessarily having to work. Trading your precious time for 60k from someone else would definitely not keep me happy.

neilc 16y ago

If I made, say, $1 million/year, I think I'd be happier -- for the simple reason that I could afford to only work one day per week (or a few months per year, or work for 5 years and then semi-retire, etc.). That would mean a lot more freedom to choose how to spend my time, to travel, and so on. (Of course, I'd probably end up doing something similar to "work" during a lot of my spare time, but there's an amazing difference between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards for an activity.) I've often thought that applying this on a smaller scale would be interesting -- for example, trading $140k/year for $110k/year plus an extra six weeks of paid vacation time.

ghshephard 16y ago
Or, Trading $140k/year for $110K/year and _taking_ two weeks of vacation. I'm astonished at how few people in Silicon Valley companies take more than a week off per year. I think it's unhealthy, and, ironically, likely reduces their effectiveness overall. But, as one who took a day off, and came back to 192 email, at least 10-15 of which really needed me to pay attention - I don't understand how to leave the work place gracefully. It's almost like I have to hire my replacement, and transition all my responsibilities to them prior to taking any time off. I couldn't agree more with the author of the story - once the basics like shelter, housing, food, water and Medical Care are taken care of, spending quality time with friends and family really is the key to happiness.
- lambdajack 16y ago
  Until you consider the safety net you need if things go to hell in a handbasket. Is that $60K living at or below your means? Does it consider enough to sock away so you don't have to eat cat food in retirement or cover your real expenses if your job is pulled out from under you?
BobbyH 16y ago
neilc, I personally agree with your intuition, but Daniel Kahneman's point seems to be that, on average, you would be as happy making $60k as you would be making $1 million a year. This concurs with a lot of other research that suggests that human beings are terrible at estimating what makes them happy. I enjoyed this book on that exact topic: http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/1400077427/ http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/...

blizkreeg 16y ago

Whether it is in the making of $60K or $1M per year, happiness is in the pursuit of the making, of the living. An analogy I like is if you ask a 'tourist' about his memories of a place, you're likely to get a very different answer than if you ask a 'traveler'. In fact, in the former case, you might even get a rather drab answer. The latter will inspire you.

hugh3 16y ago
In my experience, "travelers" are just tourists who have a complex about it.

grellas 16y ago

Americans are materially wealthy relative to most of the rest of the world. I would suspect (without having any sort of citation to support it) that, when compared to Americans, most of the people who have ever lived in any time and in any country have known nowhere near the standard of living represented by a $60K annual income in the U.S. today. If that assumption is true, and if the premise of this piece is also correct, this would mean that most of the people who have ever lived throughout all of humanity's existence have been unhappy with their lives. That would seem to me a dubious proposition. I think that neither money nor happiness is the key but rather contentment. Life dishes up the good and bad to us all, and we often can't do anything about that, but learning to be content with what we have is an achievable and worthwhile goal for all - and also a better measure than money can ever be of whether we have lived our lives well.

merrick33 16y ago
I don't believe you watched the TED talk by Daniel Kahneman embedded in the blog post. Daniel Kahneman mentions the 60k stat after his discussion and says "for Americans". That should lead you to the conclusion that the number would likely be different if you did the gallup survey in a different country.
timwiseman 16y ago
Sir, as always you make excellent points. Though in this case, I think you may be neglecting one thing. As the article mentions towards the end, humans are creatures of comparison. Someone earning around 60K in America can see that they are better off materially than most of the people in their city and if they pay any attention at all to the world they will know they are vastly better off than the majority of the world. At that point they are hardly wealthy, but better off than most.
- ericd 16y ago
  Yep, I was going to post exactly this. You can be making 200k/year, but if you're a trader and your peers are pulling 400-600k, you're very likely to be unhappy with your predicament. Humans are competitive. If you have the best mud hut of everyone you know and know of, it seems likely that you'll be just as happy as that top trader, with regards to wealth.

marilyn 16y ago

Apparently you only needed $40,000 to be happy in 2004. http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2004/08/01/you-only-need-40000-to-be-happy/ http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2004/08/01/you-only-need-40000...

SamAtt 16y ago

I've never agreed with this theory. He seems to frame things in terms of irresponsible living and under that criteria I agree. If the difference between 60k and 90k is just "a little more “entertainment” and maybe some bigger stuff" to you than his theory works out. But to the person who invests that extra 30k a year and gets to retire at 50 instead of 70 I think the happiness difference is pretty significant. I'd bet the 55 year old who gets to spend his days as he wishes is much happier than the 55 year old still working his 9 to 5 job.

barrkel 16y ago
I think you may be overestimating the benefits of retirement in practice. Many retired people feel directionless and purposeless, and die sooner. By your argument, unemployed people living off the dole ought to be very happy, but it's actually depressing.
- neilc 16y ago
  Living off the dole is filled with stress. If you had a reliable, steady income and the health to enjoy it, I think most people would be much happier than they are working a typical job. Living off the dole is also not something considered socially respectable, whereas early retirement is widely accepted.
  - barrkel 16y ago
    What I'm objecting to is this concept which seems to exist in this thread that work is a drudge, and being relieved from it is a net positive. I think it's simply not true. Quite apart from enjoying your work, there's the social aspect, it gets you out of the house, gives you a reason to get up in the morning, you incrementally work towards longer-term goals, etc. Retirement in leisure has none of these things, and I strongly believe you'll find the bloom wears off the rose quite quickly if you don't find some other form of work to do, even if you don't choose to call it work, or aren't paid for it. I believe a man who retires at 70 will be happier than one who retires at 50, and he'll live longer too (leaving aside those who die between 50 and 70).

sosuke 16y ago

So if I'm single $60k is fine, throw in some dependents and that changes very fast. I think I'd be happier at $180k a year and $60k more for each new dependent that comes along. That takes care of health, house, education and plenty extra to stash away.

rokhayakebe 16y ago
It's not linear. One person = $60k. Two = definitely less than $120k.

jack7890 16y ago

Even if you believe Kahneman (I happen to), the $60k number is probably illusory for most Americans, since location is important. In NYC, perhaps the number is $95k; in rural Arkansas, perhaps it's $25k. I'd love to see data on how the specific "ideal" income level varies by location.

nandemo 16y ago
For what is worth, the average yearly income for salarymen in Tokyo is about 6 million yen (~=U$65k). http://nensyu-labo.com/ken_tokyo.htm http://nensyu-labo.com/ken_tokyo.htm (In Japanese) I think NYC's cost of living is not that much higher than Tokyo's. However, as many pointed out in this thread, people care a lot about their income relative to their neighbors. So it's plausible that New Yorkers would require a much higher income to be content, compared to Tokyoites.

dnsworks 16y ago

Having watched how developers (even several from HN) completely mis-understood John Allspaw's talk about business needs & deployments, I now imagine part of the next generation of HN start-up types will begin offering $60k salaries to engineers citing that TED video as the basis of their market rate guesstimate.

jamiequint 16y ago

Everyone here seems to be missing the fact that in the video he differentiates between the "experiencing self" and the "remembering self". With respect to the "remembering self", the reflective state, the more money you earn the more satisfied you are. Or to paraphrase Socrates: The unexamined life is not worth living, unless you are poor.

WingForward 16y ago

Total misrepresentation. Kahneman says that at $60K a year your direct experience of happiness flatlines. But our perception of how happy we are increases with the amount of money we make, far beyond the $60K. There's two types of happiness, how happy we are and how happy we think we are and the two correlate only at a .5. The flatlining question is "How happy are you right now?" The question that increases with wealth is "How happy are you?" Which is a fairer representation of how people understand happiness?

rg 16y ago

H L Mencken once defined a wealthy man as one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.

frankus 16y ago
Robert Frank has a book (Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class) that makes a convincing case that that effect does in fact exist. He goes on to argue for a progressive consumption tax, which is fairly convincing depending on your politics.
- ellyagg 16y ago
  "[D]epending on your politics", indeed. It's not self-evident that everyone should be equally happy. It's not even self-evident that happiness should be the overriding concern of our existence. I've sacrificed my happiness many times in the name of other principles, especially truth. And, it wasn't "sacrifice temporarily for greater happiness later" or any other such rationalization.
  - frankus 16y ago
    I agree, but that everyone should be equally happy is not what the book argues at all. Frank's argument boils down to the fact that a lot of categories of consumption are zero-sum games, and that if played with lower stakes people could afford more important things with the money they save. For instance, if every SUV owner has to have 20-inch wheels to appear wealthy, SUV owners aren't as a whole are worse off than if 18-inch wheels were considered a sign of wealth and they all had health insurance. So the argument is that there are a lot of consumption arms races in the economy where some sort of coordinated de-escalation would benefit all of the players. The coordination he proposes is a progressive consumption tax imposed by the government, which I would agree is probably superior to the current progressive income tax.
jseliger 16y ago
Upvoted. People interested in this discussion should also read Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, which discusses the surprising vast amount of research on various aspects of happiness, and that research draws on a fairly diverse array of methods (self-reports, random beepers, inferences based on statistics, etc.). Gilbert puts the dollar amount closer to $40K, rather than $60K, and points out the Mencken quote in action: most people think they need to earn about 20% more than they do, almost regardless of how much they earn. But people seem more satisfied by work they find meaningful, a good sex life, and social connections (not necessarily in that order). I mentioned Stumbling on Happiness in my list of influential / important books to me: http://jseliger.com/2010/03/22/influential-books-on-me-that-is http://jseliger.com/2010/03/22/influential-books-on-me-that-... , though perhaps I should've said more about it.

rg 16y ago

H L Mencken once defined a wealthy man as one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.

steveplace 16y ago

Happiness as a function of wealth represents a sigmoid function. This function is different for people (you could go around and define the coefficients in some stupid analogy). The second derivative is the most important. Where that hits its peak is where you can define "financial freedom," and where it hits its trough is where you can define "fuck you money."

tsally 16y ago

This article missed half the point and doesn't quite capture what was said in the TED talk. Earning above $60,000 a year doesn't affect the happiness of the experiencing self. But as Kahneman goes on to say, it certainly affects the happiness of the remembering self. So a lot of money wont affect how happy you are at a particular moment, but it does affect how happy you are with your life as a whole.

mikeyur 16y ago

I recently spent a few hours figuring out how much I need to be happy. Happy to me is living comfortable with enough extra cash to go out or take periodic trips without going into debt. I'm currently living at home and paying off some debt (I'm only 19 so it's still socially acceptable to be living with mom and dad :P). I wrote out the cost of necessities (rent, phone/internet, food, transportation, healthcare/insurance) and then all of the extras. I want to live comfortable so for rent I said $1500 (about what a 1bdrm condo in Vancouver goes for), food $800 (includes going out to eat and regular trips to starbucks), Phone/Internet $150, Transit pass $100, healthcare $100. The costs are mostly rounded up, if I can save cash without sacrificing happiness I'll cut costs down. On top of the basics I want to save $500 (minimum) each month and have $2k or so in the "misc" category. This includes clothes, household expenses and extras. I calculated the amount and it was around $5500/mo. I then recalculated and factored taxes in, I believe it was around $6800/month pre-taxes. In the past month I've been looking at ways to get this income. I could look into a 9-5 job, but that wouldn't make me very happy. I decided to get a couple clients on retainer with $7k/mo. as my goal. I've already locked down a large client who will cover most of my income for about 40hrs/month of work on my end. I'm quite confident I'll find another client to get me to the goal amount. I'll be able to live well for approximately 3hrs per day, 5 days a week of work. I'm talking to a startup right now about joining on as a cofounder, and if I do I'm glad I'll be able to work on my own company without having to survive on ramen or live in a crack den.

jimbokun 16y ago
"On top of the basics I want to save $500 (minimum) each month and have $2k or so in the "misc" category." I would recommend swapping the save and misc amounts.

yason 16y ago

You can be happy with really low earnings, too. It's just harder then but the happiness or lack of it is still inside your head. It's harder with very little money because you will have to learn to be truly happy—not just I-don't-have-to-worry-about-paying-for-food-and-rent happy. In the latter case, you can keep thinking of how happy you are because you have so few things to worry about. In the former case you can't afford to worry at all.

charlesju 16y ago

I would be miserable making a steady $60,000/year.

adamilardi 16y ago

They say money can't buy happiness look at my cking smile ear to ear baby!. Boiler room

xbryanx 16y ago

Hey tech brainiacs. Read this, and then come work at one of the many non-profit organizations starving for your intelligence, but unable to attract you because of ridiculous salary imbalances. We'd love to have you...and 60k is about all we'll ever be able to afford...and you'll be happy.

justinchen 16y ago
I think a recruiting campaign centered on that point might actually be effective. I'd like to see some non-profits use it.

JustinSeriously 16y ago

I think the key take-away is this: But the real trick, Kahneman said, is to spend time with people you like. I've looked at my history of happiness, and I've found very little correlation between my salary and happiness, mostly just a short term happiness bump when I first get a raise. On the other hand, the correlation between nearness of good friends and my happiness stands clearly.

Maven911 16y ago

A better title would be: "Study shows that happiness does not increase with salary if you make over 60k a year"